As well known to those skilled in the art, in laminators, films wound around upper and lower film rollers pass between a pair of heating rollers and a pair of feed rollers. Thereafter, an object material passes between both the heating rollers and the feed rollers after being guided by a guide plate. Thus, the films are attached to upper and lower surfaces of the object material.
The laminators are classified into a laminator using a film roll formed by rolling a film around a paper tube, and a laminator using sheet films which are marketed after being cut into various sizes.
The present invention relates to a device to solve problems occurring in conventional laminators using the film rolls.
Such a film-roll type laminator has two film rolls to supply upper and lower films to heating rollers. The upper and lower films are respectively coated on upper and lower surfaces of an object material.
Each of the film rolls must be installed in the laminator such that an adhesive surface of the film faces towards a surface of the object material. Therefore, when the film roll is installed in the laminator, the user must always confirm a correct film roll installation orientation. However, it is difficult to distinguish the film roll installation orientation. Thus, in the film-roll type laminator, a problem of installing the film roll to the laminator in a backwards orientation frequently occurs.
Furthermore, both ends of the upper and lower film rolls must be aligned with both sides of the object material. However, it is very difficult for general users. If the upper and lower film rolls are not precisely aligned with the object material, both sides of the object material may not be coated with the films.
As well, the film extracted from the film roll must be tensioned to a predetermined tension to prevent the film from being undesirably folded. To achieve this purpose, conventional laminators have a separate unit to tension a film. Therefore, the conventional laminators are problematic in that the costs of the laminator are excessively increased.